


Misunderstandings

by TimMcGee



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bev and his mom bond thru sarcasm and food, Beverly is artsy, Beverly is kind of a little punk, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Martha Toegold is gonna murder Beverly Toegold IV, Misunderstandings, No Actual Non-con Drug Use Happening, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimMcGee/pseuds/TimMcGee
Summary: Sometimes misunderstandings end friendships, other times they start them. Wherein Beverly rushes to conclusions, Hardwon is taken down, and Moonshine plans a kidnapping.-Based on a scene in episode 66: The Unholy Pilgrimage -
Relationships: Moonshine Cybin & Hardwon Surefoot & Beverly Toegold V
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Misunderstandings

There are very few things that Beverly Toegold the 5 th hates in the world and all of them currently have to do with this pompous asshole sulky walking along next to him. Beverly  _ was _ looking forward to the annual camping trip with his parents especially since this year, two festivals are happening near the campground, till they pulled into their site and heard an all too familiar annoying voice call over, “Hey gang!”

Turns out that the Pebblepots had decided to go ‘camping’ so they could attend the nearby Wine and Cheese Festival. So while Beverly set up his family’s tent and unloaded the rest of the car, his parents were dragged into helping the Pebblepots set up the top of the line RV they just bought as the Pebblepots clearly had no idea how to set it up correctly. By the time they had finished breakfast this morning, Beverly was looking for any excuse to escape and thought he found one when another family he passed on the way the bathroom was loudly talking about the local craft festival set-up down the road. Scurrying back to camp, he eagerly brought that up to his mom only for Duncan to overhear and loudly declare that if Beverly was going there then the older Toegolds must absolutely join them at the nicer festival. When his mom tried to object saying that Bev wasn’t old enough to go alone, trying to wiggle out of spending the day with the Pebblepots herself, his dad made that tragic error of suggesting that Denny could bring Beverly to the festival instead. The icy glare his dad got as Duncan loudly declared that a brilliant idea could’ve frozen Pelor while Denny tried to wheedle his way out of babysitting Bev and into fun at the wine festival.

Leading to this situation that Beverly is now in, heading to a craft fair with Denny. Oh joy. Beverly hoists his backpack up higher and tries to ignore the complaining of Denny behind him.

“Uuuugh, can’t believe this……..fucking ridiculous……why do  _ I _ have to babysit…..could’ve gone to the wine festival but  _ nooooo _ ……taking  _ forever _ to get there….”

Just as Beverly can feel himself reaching his breaking point, they suddenly reach the end of the trail and step out on top of a hill overlooking looking a valley that has a ton of tents, moving people, and faintly echoing music. Beverly is surprised to see the number of cars waiting to get into the parking lot off to the side and feels excitement returning with the prospect that this maybe won’t be so horrible. Then Denny speaks.

“Come on, Beverly. Let’s just get this over with.”

“Denny, you could at least try to have a good attitude about this.”

“I gotta babysit you when I could be drinking wine cause  _ apparently _ you can’t be trusted to go alone.”

“That’s not- Fine. Whatever,” curtly says Beverly as he turns away from Denny and makes his way down the hill towards the festival entrance. As Beverly pays for their tickets, he feels excitement returning as he starts to feed off the happy energy of the crowd and the upbeat music playing. Nearly skipping over to the first row of tents, Beverly flits eagerly from one stall to the next taking in the beautiful workmanship of various pieces of hand-crafted furniture and household goods.

It’s well past noon by the time Beverly feels his excitement fading as hunger takes its place, and as Denny finally has had enough and storms away towards the food stalls. Rolling his eyes, Beverly makes his way towards the Crick Elves’ stalls, excited to indulge in his and his mom’s guilty pleasure. Carefully storing the mason jars of crawfish and jambalaya in his backpack alongside his various purchases, Beverly takes the plate the elf is holding out to him and goes to try and find Denny again. Beverly finds Denny in the second place he looks, in the shaded tent next to the performers staring lustfully at them as he drinks heavily from a tankard.

“Denny.”

“Fuck! Beverly…sigh, what now?”

“There’s still more tents I want to go look at, so-“

“Uuuugh, seriously?? What more could there be??”

“Well there’s-“

“Whatever, go by yourself. I’m staying here, come find me when you’re done.”

“……You’ll be right here when I come back? Not going to leave me behind like you did-“

“Yes! Yes! I’ll be  _ right _ here. Now shoo.”

Not entirely trusting Denny to stick to his word especially since he had forgotten Beverly places before, Beverly shoots a quick text to his mom letting her know that he and Denny have split up, but he knows to way back if Denny were to abandon him. Judging by the speed of her response and amount of emojis, Bev knows she’s just having a  _ wonderful _ time on her end and starts a snark filled chat as he slows starts to wander the remaining stalls. After extracting a promise of being back before it gets too dark and to pick up some fabric for their next project, his mom lets Bev go and he finishes touring the remaining stalls.

By the time he doubles back to a couple of stalls for the requested fabric and various small gifts for his friends, it’s past dinner time and families are beginning to leave and stalls are packing up as the food section begins to expand outwards to make way for more tables and a large dancing space in the middle. Getting another plate of food before trying to find Denny, Beverly starts to carefully make his way through the crowd while munching on a BBQ sandwich and surprisingly finds Denny in the relatively same area he left him in. However, Denny seems to have found some of his friends and they are well on their way to being drunk.

Beverly spends the next hour or so alternating between watching Denny and his friends get drunker and watching the dance floor. Finally, Beverly gets tired of waiting and tries to get Denny to leave so they can get back before dark, but Denny shrugs Beverly off and his friends start picking on Beverly for being scared of the dark. Rolling his eyes hard at the barely coherent remarks, Beverly tries to point out that Denny has no other way home but one of Denny’s friends waves a hand in the air to summon their valet over to table and says that they’ll take Denny back and too bad there isn’t room for Bev before the table breaks into drunk laughter. Sighing, Beverly walks over the valet to double-check if they’ll be able to get Denny back, and once getting confirmation, says bye to Denny and heads off. 

Meandering his way over towards the side exit, Beverly takes a moment to text his mom to update her on the situation and reassure her that he’s fine walking back. Beverly stops just shy of actually exiting and takes a moment to appreciate the setting sun while he finishes his conversation with his mom. Suddenly a burst of loud voices startles him and turns his attention toward a row of tents where a large group is making their way towards the beer garden. Snorting to himself at his jumpiness, Beverly glances down the other remaining rows of tents as he goes to leave but something he sees makes him take a second look. Sucking in a breath in alarm, Beverly watches in horror as a very large, buff man bodily slings a smaller woman over his shoulder before walking towards the woods. As Bev watches longer, he sees the woman go limp, her arms hanging down and swaying with the motion of the man’s steps.

Beverly frantically looks around for anyone that could help but everyone is too far away and the crowd noise is too loud to shout as the man steadily gets closer to the woods. Running after them, Beverly is just able to close the distance enough that he doesn’t immediately lose sight of them after they enter the woods before him. Seeing that the man is taking the path back to the campgrounds, Beverly decides it would probably be better to try and save the woman there, rather than escaping and getting lost in the woods. Plus Beverly hopes that whatever is in her system will have some time to fade out and hopefully they could run to a nearby campsite with other people for help. Stealthily following behind inside the path’s treeline and ducking behind trees when Beverly thinks he sees the man is turning around, Beverly is able to get close enough where he can hear the man humming happily under his breath.

Barely able to stop the wave of rage from overwhelming him, Beverly clenches his fists to try and quell the shaking, almost missing the trail ending and the park road starting. As the man continues his way past empty campsites, Beverly carefully follows behind just inside the tree-line, letting the man get ahead when Beverly needs to cross a site entrance. Finally, as they reach the far end of the campground, the man turns down a campsite entrance and Beverly can see a modest camp set up through the trees and gets into a position to launch a rescue as soon as the situation is right.

Hardwon is having a great day as he carries Moonshine back from the festival where they had finished their shifts at the food tent and then spent a while drinking in the beer tent. Happily humming while Moonshine softly snores against his back, Hardwon reenters the park and makes his towards their camp, unfazed by the occasional snapping of twigs he hears in the woods. As Hardwon enters their campsite he jostles Moonshine awake before carefully placing her sluggish, half-asleep body into one of their chairs so that he can go get supplies for a fire.

Stepping away and stretching to work out some of the kinks he has in his shoulders, Hardwon is caught completely flat-footed as something bursts from the trees with war-cry and crashes into his midsection. Hardwon is tackled hard onto his back, getting the wind knocked out of him, and tries to curl around the struggling creature so that it can’t go after Moonshine. Struggling to suck in a Moradin-damned breath, struggling to contain the wriggling creature, Hardwon gets a lucky hold on the nape of its neck and in an incredibly smooth move born out of playing with Crick youngin’s, stands up while stretching his arm away from his body. Even the meantime, Moonshine gets herself out of the chair, harshly rubbing at her eyes because there’s no way a random kid had just burst from the woods and attacked Hardwon.

Hardwon just gets his breath back as the kid still tries to claw and twist out of his grip, and he gives the kid a little shake to stop. The kid goes limp, breathing harshly, before raising an angry look at Hardwon.

“What the  _ FUCK _ are you doing-“ Hardwon begins before the kid quickly locks both of their arms over his wrist and uses Hardwon’s grip to leverage themselves into landing a solid kick to his chin. Hardwon goes back down completely stunned and drops the kid as he collapses. Moonshine hurries over to stop the kid from attacking a prone Hardwon, only for Beverly to whirl around and latch onto her arm and starting to pull her away from Hardwon.

“What-what in the world are you doing, youngin!?”

“Come we gotta go. I’m saving you!”

“Why?! From what?? Hardwon??”

“From him! He was carrying your unconscious body from the festival!! I saw!”

“Ok, youngin,” Moonshine breaks Beverly grasp on her arm as they near the campsite’s entrance, and rests both her hands on his shoulder, “I believe there was a mix up here. Please, could you explain why you thought Hardw… why you thought I was in trouble?” 

As Hardwon groans from the ground and lifts a hand to check his jaw, Beverly starts to shakily explain why he thought Moonshine was in trouble, realizing he has probably just made a huge mistake. Hardwon listens to the kid’s explanation while checking for damage and he can’t help but be impressed that the littl’ Halfling took him, who the kid thought was a criminal, down. Fuck, looking back, Hardwon can’t necessarily blame the kid, and as he works his jaw, no real harm had been done anyways. Beverly wraps up his explanation, not making eye contact with Moonshine and scuffing his foot in the dirt, completely embarrassed, missing Moonshine bringing her hand up to her mouth with tears in her eyes.

“Oh my Melora! Youngin! That’s just! Can I give you a hug?” 

“What- but I hurt your friend!”

Hardwon sits up groaning, “You got one hell of a kick, kid, but I’m alright.”

“Yeah, Hardwon’s got a pretty hard head. It’s just that…that was the sweetest, most heroic thing a complete stranger has done for me, and I show appreciation through hugs.”

“Ummm yeah, you can give me a hug,” Beverly is barely able to say that before Moonshine sweeps him up into a big hug, twirling them around in joy. Hardwon starts to laugh at the befuddled look the kid has as he stands up but the laugh tapers off into a pained groan as his head throbs. By the time Hardwon blinks the spots out of his vision, Moonshine and the kid are awkwardly hovering around his crouched position with the kid sporting a truly pained and panicked look on his face. Beverly and Moonshine both quickly offer to heal Hardwon at the same time, giving each other startled looks before looking to Hardwon for his answer.

“Let the kid do it, Moonie,” Hardwon trades a look with Moonshine as the kid relaxes at the chance to fix the problem he caused from Hardwon’s acceptance, “By the way, kid. What’s your name?”

“What? Oh! Um, Beverly… Beverly Toegold the 5 th .”

“Moonshine Cybin.”

“Hardwon Surefoot,” Hardwon introduces as Beverly starts healing him and suddenly Hardwon feels all the aches fade away, not just the pained the kid caused, “Damn, Beverly. You really pack a punch with whatever ya do.”

Beverly blushes hard and tries to downplay himself while Moonshine directs him over to the chairs and Hardwon continues to give praise as he gathers things for a fire. Soon Beverly is relaxing and chatting away happily with them before he suddenly bolts from his chair darting into the woods and is back before Hardwon or Moonshine fully stand up, sheepishly carrying his backpack. Snorting in tandem, Moonshine and Hardwon relax back into their chairs and continue their conversation this time focusing on the cool things Beverly got at the festival. As the fire begins to the dwindle down, Hardwon stands up to go put another log on when a loud ringing startles him into dropping the log onto his foot. Beverly scrambles to answer his phone, stomach sinking as he remembers his deal with his mom and how he clearly had forgotten it as he listens to Moonshine laughing and Hardwon whining. 

“Hey, Mom……I’m fine!... Mom…Mom………Mom…….It’s fine……….I’m fine…….Mom…….Mom…..Mom…..Mother!............Mom……….I’m in the campgrounds!.....Yes…No…No…NO....But…I know but…..Mom…Yes, I……Yes…I’m on my way...Bye…Love you, too.” Beverly hangs up and sheepishly looks at his new friends before saying, “So, I completely forgot to let my mom know I made it back. Ummm I really need to get going. I’m sorry, I’ve had a great time with you guys!”

“We could meet up tomorrow before you go.”

“Ah, yeah…I’m grounded for the next month so I can’t.”

“Well, how long are you staying?”

“Just through tomorrow morning…” Beverly looks morosely down at his feet before looking up to say goodbye, but Hardwon is putting the fire out and Moonshine is clearing the surrounding area while declaring, “We’ll at least walk you back Bev!”

Walking back there’s a sadder air to the camaraderie that had surrounded the trio, especially for Beverly as he struggles to connect with new people. As they crunch closer to Beverly’s site, the previously empty sites are now filled with quiet families and more rambunctious adults that clearly came from the Wine Festival, the sounds seemingly mocking Beverly as he steadily gets closer to saying goodbye forever. Too soon Beverly spots the stupidly overly fancy RV of the Pebblepots and slows to a stop before turning to Hardwon and Moonshine, “Well, this is where I’m going to leave you. I don’t want to get you in trouble with my parents.”

“You sure, Bev? It’s really no problem for us to come with you.”

“No, Moonshine, really. My dad is the head of Galaderon Securities and will assume the worse cause…well…um.”

“Ah. Yes, I’ve met several of those people before…Moonshine, we should listen to him.”

“Well, you not leaving without another hug! Of course, only if you want-“ Beverly crashes into her, hugging her middle tightly and shaking slightly as Hardwon joins in, “We’ll just have to come visit you in Galaderon!”

“I won’t be there for much longer…I got accepted into the University of Arcane Arts and Sciences.”

“What?! That’s awesome! We’re actually-“

“BEVERLY TOEGOLD THE 5 TH ! YOU GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW! OR SO HELP ME, PELOR!”

“fuck“ with one last quick hug to Hardwon and Moonshine, Beverly takes off towards the fuming silhouette of his mother. Hardwon and Moonshine do a final wave when Beverly looks back as his mom drags him into their site, and set off back towards their site. Hardwon starts getting the fire going again and as he sits back into his chair, Moonshine pipes up, “So Hardwon…..what do you say about visiting my dad?”

**Author's Note:**

> So the scene I based this off of is the one where Moonshine asks Hardwon to give her a piggyback ride so she can trance while they move and Hardwon instead carries her in a fireman's carry.
> 
> Moonshine plans to finally accept her father's offer to work/attend the University and then recruit Bev into all kinds of shenanigans alongside Hardwon.


End file.
